SOFT DIRT
I have had so many requests for this story that I had to post it. It was written by my brother Mike Quinn and has become legendary in Wheeling.

My first foray into capitalism began with recognizing the need for quality dirt. Since my mother had plants everywhere on the front porch of the house, the need for quality dirt was evident. The problem with most dirt was that it was too hard. In this spirit soft dirt was invented. Now, what you may ask is soft dirt? Soft dirt is made by carefully screening normal dirt through an old piece of window screen. The result if you use good, high quality dirt was ready for the consumer.
Ideally, soft dirt could be used for your plants, however it could be used wherever dirt was needed. It was like instant dirt. since it was packaged very dry, you could just add water and have high quality soft mud. As the demand for soft dirt expanded, it became necessary to surface mine it in the backyard. The net result was a very large hole.
Our father was for some strange reason tolerant of the excavation which was about ten by ten by three feed deep. He insinuated to our mother that it could become a swimming pool. In retrospect, it seems like a make work project to keep a bunch of little kids busy.
Every kid in the neighborhood wanted to help dig the hole, so it became the practice to charge the employees to work. As luck would have it, the soft dirt factory had no insurance, and sure enough a disaster hit. The fine crew of young boys managed to dig up the gas line leading to the house.
My recollection is not complete, but I think we managed to break it. The net result was we needed a new gas line laid into our house. Luckily by some imaginative bickering, my father found out the gas line had been improperly installed in the first place, and it was up to the gas company to replace it. Fortunately this kept the soft dirt factory from being forced out of business. The sales department of the factory went door to door in Woodsdale with quart jars of dirt. It sold well to old ladies who could always use a quart for their plants.

Editor's note: I can still see my poor mother out in the back yard trying to fill that hole in! She never succeeded because as fast as she shoveled in, the boys would dig it out again...seems this went on for several years. I also remember being in the hole with a makeshift roof of some kind when it was raining and watching the water roll down the sides filling the bottom. I think there was a charge for this as well.